In the second-to-last scene of the historical Palestinian drama Al-Taghriba Al-Falastiniya, Israeli soldiers storm the refugee camp where Abu Saleh and his family live. They round up the men, the young, and even the boys, forcing them all into the camp square.

An Israeli officer begins brutally beating Abu Saleh’s young son. His cousin can no longer stand by and shouts, “He’s just a kid!”

The Israeli soldier answers: “This kid can carry a weapon, just like you.”

Then comes one of the most powerful lines in the entire series. Abu Saleh says:

“This is what they want: the land without its people. That’s why staying here, in our homes, is itself a form of struggle and jihad.”

And perhaps that is one of the simplest ways to understand the Palestinian resistance.

Remaining on your land is resistance. Refusing to be uprooted is resistance. Rebuilding after your home is destroyed, planting your fields again, raising your children where generations of your family have lived, these are all ways of holding on to a people’s connection to their homeland.

Because once Palestinians lose their determination to remain on their land, we risk losing not only the land itself, but the very heart of our struggle for it.

If you want to understand Palestinians in a way a hundred books could never teach you, watch Al-Taghriba Al-Falastiniya.

You will experience Palestinian life from the inside: family, community, traditions, love, conflict, loss, and survival. You will see what Palestine was before the Nakba, what was destroyed, how people became refugees, and how displacement shaped the generations that came after.

Across 31 episodes, you will follow one family from rural Palestine under the British Mandate, through revolt, the Nakba, exile, refugee camps, and the decades that followed.

Al-Taghriba doesn’t simply tell you what happened to Palestinians. It makes you know the people it happened to.

I’ve now finished translating and subtitling the entire series into English.

And if you’ve already watched Al-Taghriba, you can now gift a friend or family member one month of full access to all 31 episodes for a one-time $15.

https://www.patreon.com/c/Taghriba_Filistinia

The first question I want to answer is one I have been asked before: Why do you feel nostalgic for your life in Gaza before October 7 when, for years, we were told that Gaza was “the world’s largest open-air prison”? Isn’t that a contradiction?

After Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza and severe restrictions on its crossings. Many goods, including essential construction materials such as cement and steel, were restricted or prohibited from entering, and the restrictions affected almost every aspect of life, particularly the economy. Many factories eventually closed, the electricity crisis became part of our daily existence, and unemployment rose dramatically. We used to get around eight hours of electricity a day, and that was considered a good day. There were many days when we had electricity for only two hours.

At the same time, corruption within the Hamas government gradually became more visible in ordinary people’s daily dealings with government institutions. This was a bitter disappointment for many Gazans who did not belong to any political faction, including my parents and several of my aunts and uncles, but had nevertheless voted for Hamas because its electoral platform had focused heavily on fighting the corruption that had become entrenched within Palestinian Authority institutions. In the early years of Hamas rule, it became extremely difficult for someone who was not affiliated with Hamas to obtain a senior administrative position in government institutions, including hospitals and schools.

When the Palestinian political division began, President Mahmoud Abbas instructed Palestinian Authority employees in Gaza, including my mother, who was a secondary school teacher at the time, to stop going to work. Employees who ignored those instructions and continued working under the Hamas government risked losing their PA salaries. My mother felt guilty receiving a salary while sitting at home without working, so she initially returned to her school. There, she found a domineering headteacher affiliated with Hamas who spoke to her disrespectfully and arrogantly and told her that she would transfer her to a school far from our home. At that point, my mother decided to follow the Palestinian Authority’s instructions. She did not want to spend the final years of her professional life being humiliated under people she considered unprofessional.

This naturally raises another question: what happened when tens of thousands of government employees stopped going to work and stayed at home? Huge staffing gaps suddenly appeared in schools, hospitals and other government institutions. The police and security services presented less of a problem for Hamas because Hamas trusted its own loyalists in these sectors and recruited young men affiliated with the movement to fill the vacancies.

But schools, hospitals and civilian institutions were different. Hamas called on unemployed young graduates to volunteer. Education graduates were encouraged to volunteer in schools, while people with medical qualifications were asked to volunteer in hospitals. I experienced the consequences personally because I was a secondary school student at the time. I remember the lack of experience and competence among some of the newly recruited teachers and how much we struggled as students because of it. Many of us had to take private lessons to compensate for what we were missing at school.

Not all of these volunteers were Hamas supporters. Many were politically independent, and some may even have supported Fatah or other Palestinian factions. What they shared was the hope that volunteering might eventually lead to a permanent job that could secure their future in a place where unemployment was already widespread. This was how another major division emerged in Gaza: the divide between employees of the Ramallah government and those employed by the Hamas-run government.

My sister and her husband are both civilian employees of the Hamas-run government, and both are politically opposed to Hamas. My sister obtained her position through a formal examination and interview process in which she competed against hundreds of other applicants. Her husband initially volunteered at a hospital and was eventually employed as a nurse; he already held a nursing diploma. For years, however, they received only around 40 to 50 percent of their salaries. This placed enormous financial pressure on government employees trying to meet the basic costs of life in a place as economically unstable as Gaza. To this day, these employees have not received all the accumulated salary arrears owed to them, which collectively amount to millions of dollars.

I mentioned in a previous article that Hamas imposed its own taxes and customs duties on people in Gaza, but ordinary citizens saw little tangible benefit from much of this revenue because taxes and customs revenues were largely used to finance the government and its payroll. It is also important to understand that the already exhausted Gazan consumer could effectively find himself paying taxes and duties imposed through three different authorities. If someone wanted to buy a car, for example, its price could incorporate Israeli taxes or customs arrangements, Palestinian Authority charges, and additional taxes or fees imposed by the government in Gaza. A cylinder of cooking gas, meanwhile, had cost around one-fifth of its later price during the era of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas also used its control over the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing to collect taxes and fees and increased the cost of many transactions within civilian government institutions.

There is also the well-known statement attributed to Khalil al-Hayya, now the head of Hamas: “Hamas’s money is for Hamas alone.” This, in many ways, captured the financial equation. When money was involved, a distinction was drawn between Hamas as a government responsible for governing more than two million people and Hamas as a political and armed movement receiving millions of dollars from Iran and other sources.

Anyone who has been following recent developments will also know that Hamas has sought payment of the accumulated financial entitlements owed to its government employees as part of postwar arrangements. The Peace Council reportedly rejected retroactive payment, saying that the technocratic government would be responsible for paying salaries once it assumed control, but would not take responsibility for arrears accumulated under the previous government. There have also been reports that the UAE could cover the accumulated entitlements of Hamas government employees through a mechanism whose details have not yet been publicly disclosed.

The Palestinian political division was not merely bureaucratic, economic or financial; it was also bloody and deeply traumatic. After Hamas violently seized control of Gaza, dozens of Palestinian Authority security personnel were killed, including incidents in which men were thrown from rooftops. A religious ruling was also issued by a Hamas-affiliated cleric declaring that killing members of Fatah’s security forces was permissible and would lead those who killed them to paradise. The political division consequently tore through Gaza’s social fabric. There were divorces, family disputes and broken relationships because of political affiliation. I even remember that, for a long period, one of the considerations surrounding marriage was whether the families of the bride and groom belonged to the same political faction or whether both families were politically independent.

As Gaza’s economic conditions deteriorated, a significant number of young people, doctors and businesspeople emigrated. Wages could be astonishingly low. A labourer might work an entire day for just 20 shekels, which was approximately five dollars at the time. That was five dollars for an entire day of work, not five dollars an hour. Several estimates have suggested that between 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians left Gaza between Hamas’s takeover of the Strip in 2007 and October 2023, although there is no comprehensive official figure measuring permanent emigration over that entire period.

Despite all of this, Gazans continued to adapt to extraordinarily difficult circumstances and tried to create hope and build better lives even when reality offered very little reason for optimism. Gaza had several beautiful shopping malls, excellent restaurants, a small number of older hotels overlooking the Mediterranean, the Gaza corniche, the harbour and beautiful wedding halls. These things existed alongside the blockade, poverty, unemployment and political repression. One reality did not erase the other.

I worked as an English teacher at AMIDEAST and in UNRWA schools, both of which were considered prestigious jobs in Gaza and provided me with a good income. That income enabled me to buy an apartment in one of the nicest neighbourhoods of Gaza City. Buying, finishing and furnishing the apartment cost me around $110,000, and after we finished paying its instalments, we bought a car. Imagine living in Gaza with a partner who also works, owning your apartment, having a car and children, and finally reaching a point where your family has some stability after years of hard work. We had achieved all of those things and were planning our first trip abroad together when October 7 happened and changed everything forever. I will leave a video of my home and my family here so you can see a glimpse of the life I am talking about.

Other people in Gaza naturally had very different financial circumstances, but they were all, without exception, living better lives than the ones they are living now. I do not remember people starving in Gaza before this war. There was poverty, certainly, and there were many poor families, but I do not remember a poor person routinely going to sleep hungry. Social solidarity was strong, and food was distributed through charities, families and community initiatives from time to time. During Eid al-Adha, everyone, including poor families, ate meat, and families would often preserve some of it to eat later.

Education was also deeply valued in Gaza. In 2023, more than 98 percent of Gaza’s population aged 15 and above could read and write. There is no one in my extended family who did not attend university, and this is true of many families I know in Gaza. Higher education was not viewed as a luxury. For many families, it was one of the few things parents believed they could give their children that might create the possibility of a better future.

Another significant economic change came shortly before October 7. In October 2021, Israel once again began allowing larger numbers of Gazans to enter Israel for work, initially through permits officially classified as “economic needs” or “merchant” permits. By late October 2021, Israel had increased the quota from 7,000 to 10,000 permits, and a substantial proportion of the people holding those permits were effectively working as wage labourers inside Israel.

Then, on August 1, 2022, an even more significant change took place. Israel began formally regulating the employment of Gazans as workers rather than continuing to rely on “merchant” or “economic needs” permits. A formal system involving registered employers and work permits was introduced, particularly in the construction and agricultural sectors.

One particularly interesting detail is the way Hamas determined who would be prioritised for these opportunities. According to a study of Gazan workers, the Hamas-run Ministry of Labour prioritised married men between the ages of 27 and 60 who were not government employees and did not hold university degrees. Priority was also given to unemployed men, men with larger families and those whose wives were not employed.

As a result, Gazans working in Israel were considerably less educated than working-age men in Gaza as a whole. Around 40 percent of Gazan men aged 25 to 64 had post-secondary education, compared with only 17 percent of Gazan workers in Israel. Even more strikingly, 83 percent of these workers had been unemployed in September 2021, before opportunities to work in Israel reopened. This meant that the permits overwhelmingly benefited people who had previously been unemployed rather than simply drawing existing workers away from jobs inside Gaza.
https://www.inss.org.il/publication/workers-from-gaza/

The difference in income was enormous. Workers who had previously been employed inside Gaza earned an average of around 1,040 shekels per month, whereas once they began working in Israel, their average monthly income rose to approximately 6,350 shekels, more than six times as much. This dramatically improved the economic circumstances of the families who received these opportunities. The study described the effect as moving some households from the lower-middle part of Gaza’s income distribution into the highest income decile.

Statistics, however, cannot fully convey what these permits meant socially. In Gaza, hearing that someone had received a permit to work in Israel was almost like hearing that they had won the lottery. Men and young people did everything they could to improve their chances of obtaining one because a single permit could transform the financial circumstances of an entire family.

So when I say that I miss my life in Gaza before October 7, I am not saying that Gaza was free, prosperous or easy. It was none of those things. We lived under blockade, high unemployment, political repression and division, corruption, electricity cuts, severe restrictions on movement, repeated wars and an economy that offered far too few opportunities to its young people. But none of those things represented the entirety of our lives.

A place can be a prison and still be a home. Inside that prison, we studied, worked, fell in love, married, raised children, bought homes and carefully furnished them. We saved money to buy cars, went to restaurants, celebrated weddings, walked along the Mediterranean, dreamed of travelling and planned our futures. We created lives within the limits imposed on us, and those lives were real, valuable and worth mourning.

That is perhaps what outsiders sometimes struggle to understand when Gazans speak nostalgically about the lives we had before October 7. We are not nostalgic for the blockade, the electricity cuts, unemployment, corruption, political division or the restrictions that shaped our lives. We are nostalgic for the lives we managed to build despite all of them.

I hope this article has given you at least a small glimpse into what life in Gaza was actually like before October 7. I will answer the other questions in future articles.

They said:

Look,
it’s a kite of terror.

A thread of fire,
a paper wing of gunpowder,
and a tail of rage
dragging across the sky.

Look, they said,
how dangerous it is.

And no one looked
at the hand holding the string.

A child’s hand.

A hand that once held crayons,
schoolbooks,
his mother’s fingers
on the way home.

But there is no home now.

So he stands among the ruins
and sends a scrap of paper
into a sky crowded with drones.

They called the kite terror.

Not the bombs
that buried his street.

Not the fire
that swallowed his house.

Not the hunger
that hollowed his body.

Not the machines above him
that made the sky itself
something to fear.

The kite.

The little trembling thing
made of paper and string.

That, they said,
was the terror.

And somewhere beneath it,
a child looked up
at the only thing from Gaza
still allowed to fly.

By: Alaa Radwan (Alaa from Gaza)

Here is my father in the hospital, taking his medication as he struggles to breathe. He is 66 years old, the son of refugees uprooted from the Palestinian village of Najd during the 1948 Nakba.

My parents began with less than nothing, yet through a lifetime of hard work, they built a good life for their six children. All of us went to university, and two earned postgraduate degrees. My father built a business and two homes, everything a man born into dispossession had fought to create so his family would live a stable life. This senseless war took it all.

So may I ask: What was it all for? What did we gain? What victory could possibly justify reducing a lifetime of sacrifice to rubble and leaving this man fighting for breath in a hospital?

But God forbid I ask. God forbid a Palestinian question the price Palestinians have been forced to pay. The moment we ask what this war achieved, we are branded traitors, as though loving Palestine means remaining silent while Palestinians themselves are destroyed.

I have had several friends visit me in Cairo from the UK, the United States, Italy, and elsewhere, and every time someone comes to see me from abroad, I am reminded of the enormous difference between the way they arrived in Egypt and the way I did. They came because they wanted to see Egypt; I came because a war forced me to leave Gaza.

They go to the Pyramids, take boat rides along the Nile, visit the Grand Egyptian Museum, wander through Khan el-Khalili, and discover Cairo with the curiosity and excitement of people who have chosen to be here. I have been in Egypt for two years and three months, and I have not visited any of these places, because I have never been able to experience Egypt as a tourist.

A Canadian friend was genuinely surprised when she learned that I had never been to the Pyramids, and she kindly offered to pay for me to join a group tour. I thanked her, but told her I couldn’t do it, because I could not imagine standing in front of the Pyramids taking photographs and trying to enjoy myself while my family was living in tents in Gaza.

Perhaps that is the simplest way I can explain the difference between us: my friends came to Egypt knowing they had homes to return to, while I came because war had driven me from mine.

Survivor’s guilt crossed the border with me, and it has never really loosened its grip. I sometimes think it is becoming heavier with time rather than easier to carry, because every small comfort in my life now reminds me of something the people I love have been deprived of.

My father has been in the hospital in Gaza for a week. His creatinine has reached 5.5 mg/dL, and doctors say his kidney function is severely impaired. He has type 1 diabetes, underwent open-heart surgery, and had three toes amputated shortly before the genocide began. He has depended on life-saving medication for years, and after everything his body endured before the war and everything it has been forced to endure since, he is exhausted. What torments me most is knowing that I am far away, unable to sit beside his hospital bed or hold his hand when he needs his family most.

At the same time, my mother, my siblings, and their families are living in tents, enduring the scorching heat day after day, while I sleep in a room with air conditioning. I have electricity, running water and a refrigerator; I can turn on a tap when I am thirsty and close a door against the heat when I cannot bear it anymore. These are the most ordinary things imaginable, yet they no longer feel ordinary to me because every comfort I have seems to carry a reminder of someone I love who does not have it.

How do you enjoy the cool air in your bedroom when you know your mother is trying to sleep inside a burning tent? How do you drink cold water without thinking about your family struggling to find enough water to survive? How do you sit down to a meal without wondering what they managed to eat that day, or allow yourself a moment of happiness without immediately remembering the people you love who are still trapped inside a nightmare?

I genuinely do not know how a person is supposed to make peace with such contradictions, or how something so profoundly unnatural is eventually supposed to become normal.

Perhaps this is also why I have so little patience left for our Palestinian leadership. People should not be surprised by my anger toward leaders who speak about sacrifice from a distance while ordinary Palestinians are the ones paying for it with their homes, their bodies, their children, their health and their futures. When you have watched the people you love bear the consequences of political decisions they did not make, it becomes very difficult to tolerate grand speeches about endurance, steadfastness and sacrifice from those who will never experience those words in the same way.

Even my relationship with my own body has become part of this struggle. For months, I worked hard to lose the weight I gained through everything I have endured during these years of genocide, and I managed to lose six kilograms in three months. Before the war, I could have lost that amount in a single month, but I am no longer the person I was before the war, physically or emotionally.

Over the past month, I have started eating again, and I feel as though I have fallen back into the same hole I spent months trying to climb out of. I am Muslim and have never drunk alcohol in my life, so I do not even know what it tastes like, but sometimes I imagine this must resemble what addiction feels like: you can fight yourself for months, work painfully hard to regain control, and then one difficult moment can send you reaching again for the thing that gives you a few minutes of comfort, even when you know you will hate yourself for it afterwards.

For me, sometimes, that comfort is food.

I think this is one of the things people misunderstand about surviving a war: crossing a border does not necessarily mean that you have escaped it. You may physically leave the bombs behind, but the war follows you into the quiet room where you sleep, into the food you eat, into the water you drink, into your relationship with your body, and even into the moments when you are supposed to feel happy.

My body crossed the border, and my children crossed with me, but part of me is still in Gaza. It is sitting beside my father in his hospital bed, sleeping beside my mother in her tent, worrying about my siblings and their children, and wandering through the life and home that war took away from us.

So when someone is surprised that I have lived in Egypt for more than two years without seeing the Pyramids, I never quite know how to explain all of this.

Maybe one day I will go. Maybe one day I will stand in front of the Pyramids and allow myself to feel wonder without guilt arriving immediately behind it, or take a boat along the Nile without thinking about what my family is enduring hundreds of kilometres away.

But I am not there yet, because I did not come to Egypt looking for a new place to explore. I came here because I had to survive, while people I love more than anything remained behind trying to survive too.

That is the difference between being a tourist and being a refugee, and sometimes the distance between those two words feels larger than the distance between Cairo and Gaza.

On August 11, Hamas called on Palestinians to register for the first legislative elections in two decades.

The statement was filled with the language of democracy. Registration, Hamas declared, is “the essential first step” toward exercising our right to choose, participate in national decision-making and renew institutions that derive their legitimacy from “the free will of our people.”

I want Palestinians to vote. I have wanted this for years. I was only 14 when Hamas won the last legislative election in 2006. I did not vote for Hamas, or for anyone else. Yet for the next two decades, my generation was governed by the result of an election in which many of us had been too young to participate.

So I should welcome Hamas’s statement without reservation.

But I cannot read it without remembering what the movement said before the first Palestinian elections in 1996.

Back then, Hamas argued that elections held under the Oslo framework could not express the Palestinian people’s free will. They would instead legitimize a powerless authority constrained by Israeli occupation, exclude millions of refugees, marginalize Jerusalem and grant democratic cover to an unjust political settlement.

Many of those objections remain valid today. Hamas’s growing power within the Palestinian political system eventually turned elections into a route to influence, representation and control.

The election Hamas once refused

In November 1995, Hamas announced that it would boycott the coming presidential and legislative elections.

The Palestinian Legislative Council, it argued, would be little more than a product of the Oslo and Taba agreements. Israel would retain ultimate control over borders, movement, security and Jerusalem, while the elected council would be permitted to administer Palestinian life without possessing genuine sovereignty.

Hamas also objected to restricting the vote to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Millions of Palestinians in exile would have no role in choosing the council, despite constituting most of the Palestinian people. The movement warned that excluding them threatened the right of return.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israel permitted a limited number of Palestinians to cast ballots through Israeli post offices. Hamas viewed this arrangement as another assertion of Israeli sovereignty over the city.

The Carter Center and National Democratic Institute’s report confirmed that Hamas rejected the elections because it opposed the Oslo framework and considered the council’s powers too restricted.

Yet internal Hamas documents show that the decision was heavily debated. Some members favored participation, while others considered running as independents. The movement described the question as one of the most difficult decisions in its history.

Hamas eventually chose boycott. Participation, it concluded, would legitimize an institution that should not be legitimized.

Ten years later, it entered that same institution.

The institution did not change. Hamas’s interests did.

By 2005, Hamas had emerged from the Second Intifada with greater political and military influence. Fatah was struggling with public anger over corruption, disorder and patronage. Hamas’s social institutions and disciplined organization helped it perform strongly in municipal elections.

The movement decided that remaining outside the political system was no longer in its interest.

It announced that it would contest the 2006 legislative elections under the name “Change and Reform.” Its campaign emphasized fighting corruption, improving public services and reforming Palestinian institutions

Frode Løvlie’s study, “Explaining Hamas’s Changing Electoral Strategy, 1996–2006,” attributes the reversal largely to changes inside Hamas. The faction that favored boycott lost influence, while leaders who saw elections as a legitimate route to power became dominant.

Hamas argued that it could enter institutions produced by Oslo without recognizing Oslo itself. It could use the Legislative Council as another arena of struggle: challenging Fatah, confronting corruption, overseeing the executive authority and protecting the armed resistance.

That was a politically intelligent calculation. It was also a repudiation of the logic Hamas had used to justify its boycott ten years earlier.

The occupation had not ended. The council’s authority had not become sovereign. Refugees were still excluded. Jerusalem remained under Israeli control.

The fundamental conditions had barely changed. Hamas’s ability to benefit from the election had.

Even Hamas did not expect what happened next. Its leaders anticipated becoming a powerful parliamentary opposition. Instead, the movement won 74 of the council’s 132 seats.

The institution Hamas once said should not be legitimized had carried it to power.

A mandate without an expiration date

The international response to Hamas’s victory exposed another form of hypocrisy.

The United States and European governments had encouraged the elections, only to isolate the government Palestinians elected. Israel arrested Hamas legislators and obstructed the functioning of the council. Fatah struggled to accept the loss of institutions it had long controlled.

The resulting conflict contributed to the violent division of 2007, after which Hamas governed Gaza while Fatah and the Palestinian Authority maintained control over parts of the West Bank.

None of this can be erased from the history of Palestinian democratic collapse. Hamas did not destroy Palestinian democracy alone.

But neither can Hamas use the actions of Israel, Fatah or Western governments to avoid scrutiny of its own record.

Its four-year electoral mandate expired long ago. Yet Hamas continued governing Gaza without returning to the public for authorization. It demanded national elections when it believed they might restore its influence in the Palestinian political system, while boycotting or obstructing other votes it considered unilateral or unfavorable.

In 2012, Hamas rejected West Bank municipal elections because Gaza was excluded. Ismail Haniyeh called them unilateral and lacking national consensus.

In 2016, Hamas reversed course and supported municipal elections in both Gaza and the West Bank. When voting eventually proceeded only in the West Bank in 2017, Hamas refused to participate officially—yet encouraged its supporters to vote for sympathetic independent candidates.

In 2019, Hamas announced that it was ready for presidential and legislative elections, but rejected Abbas’s proposal for a legislative vote alone. It insisted that both elections be held together.

The details changed from one election to another, but the underlying pattern remained: Hamas supported elections only under conditions it considered politically acceptable to Hamas.

The election Abbas canceled—and the elections Hamas blocked

The planned 2021 elections offered Hamas its best opportunity to reenter national politics.

This time, the movement made significant compromises. It accepted proportional representation and Abbas’s election law. It dropped its demand that presidential, legislative and Palestinian National Council elections be held simultaneously, agreeing that they could take place consecutively. It appeared willing not to field a presidential candidate and began considering electoral alliances.

Hamas prepared seriously, selecting professionals and academics for its prospective list. With Fatah divided, the movement had reason to believe it could perform strongly.

Then Mahmoud Abbas postponed the elections indefinitely, officially because Israel had not guaranteed voting in East Jerusalem.

Hamas accused Abbas of using Jerusalem as an excuse to cancel an election Fatah feared losing. It was right to be outraged. Abbas had no democratic mandate to deny Palestinians another opportunity to vote, particularly after allowing his own presidential term to stretch from four years into more than two decades.

But what Hamas did next also matters.

After condemning Abbas for canceling the national elections, Hamas prevented the subsequent PA-organized municipal elections from taking place in Gaza, according to the Carter Center’s report.

Abbas denied Palestinians an election he feared losing. Hamas denied Gazans elections it had not approved.

Each side demanded democracy from the other while shielding its own power from the public.

Why is 2026 different?

Hamas’s position shifted once again this year.

In April, it officially boycotted municipal elections organized under rules requiring candidates to accept the PLO’s political program. Yet it allowed voting to proceed in Deir al-Balah and permitted candidates considered sympathetic to Hamas to run.

When Abbas later scheduled legislative elections for November 28 and unilaterally amended the electoral law, Hamas joined other Palestinian factions in demanding national dialogue and simultaneous presidential and legislative elections.

Then Abbas reversed one of the most controversial amendments, restoring the Legislative Council from 200 seats to its previous 132. Hours later, Hamas called on Palestinians to register.

Its statement did not formally confirm that Hamas would submit a list. But it clearly preserved the movement’s option to participate.

Yet the amended law still requires electoral lists to recognize the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and commit themselves to its political program and relevant international resolutions. The council remains part of the political structure that emerged from Oslo. The occupation still controls the electoral environment. Palestinians in exile remain excluded from voting for it.

Almost every fundamental objection Hamas raised in 1995 remains unresolved.

Perhaps Hamas would describe its current position as pragmatism. Political movements evolve, and refusing to participate forever would leave Palestinian institutions entirely in the hands of Fatah.

But Hamas should say this honestly. It should acknowledge that it reversed its position because elections became politically useful, not because the institution it once condemned had suddenly become sovereign or representative of all Palestinians.

Political flexibility is understandable. Presenting that flexibility as an unbroken commitment to the people’s free will is not.

This hypocrisy does not belong to Hamas alone

Fatah has no right to lecture Hamas about democracy. Mahmoud Abbas has governed without an electoral mandate for most of his presidency and canceled the most credible opportunity for national elections in 2021.

Israel has no right to invoke Palestinian democracy while arresting candidates and legislators, obstructing elections in Jerusalem and determining whether Palestinians can move between their own cities.

Nor can Western governments claim to support Palestinian self-determination while threatening to punish Palestinians if they elect leaders those governments reject.

But the hypocrisy of Fatah, Israel and the West does not transform Hamas into a democratic movement. One injustice does not excuse another.

For decades, every powerful actor has treated Palestinian votes as legitimate only when they produce an acceptable outcome.

Palestinians are the ones left without a voice.

The right to vote Hamas out

I want Palestinians to register. I want these elections to take place in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. I want presidential elections to follow. I want Palestinians in exile to have a meaningful voice in rebuilding the Palestinian National Council.

But I want more than another contest through which aging factions redistribute power among themselves.

I want the right to hold every Palestinian leader accountable including Hamas.

Hamas’s August statement says that the current moment demands institutions deriving their legitimacy from the free will of the Palestinian people. I agree.

But free will cannot mean being invited to endorse a movement that has already ruled for nearly two decades. It must include the freedom to reject that movement, criticize it, organize against it and remove it from power.

For Palestinians from Gaza, this question is especially urgent. Decisions we did not vote on have transformed our lives, destroyed our homes and determined the futures of our children. No faction can invoke our sacrifices as a source of legitimacy while denying us the power to judge those who made those decisions.

The sacrifices Hamas honors in its statement belong to the Palestinian people. They do not belong to Hamas, Fatah or any other movement.

Palestinians have spent two decades governed by mandates that expired long ago. The significance of the coming election, if it takes place, will be measured after the ballots are counted. Should voters choose another path, Hamas will have to step aside. Until then, its language of popular will remains a promise awaiting proof.

I watched Hamas official Ghazi Hamad’s interview with @piersmorgan . I was not surprised by his answers or his style of argument; this is how he has always communicated. The Palestinian leadership has long suffered from a shortage of people who can address Western audiences in English with clarity, professionalism, and persuasive force, without evasion or empty slogans.

At present, two figures stand out to me for their ability to communicate the Palestinian narrative effectively in the Western media: Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, and the brilliant Bassem Youssef. Both understand that speaking to a Western audience requires more than fluent English. It requires composure, preparation, emotional intelligence, and the ability to answer difficult questions directly.

Hamad’s English was not the main problem in his interview with Morgan. His language was sufficiently clear. The real problem was his performance and his method of argument.

The interview was confrontational by nature, but shouting, repeatedly interrupting the host, appearing angered by predictable questions, and avoiding direct answers do not project strength to a Western television audience. They project defensiveness and a loss of control. Instead of persuading uncertain viewers, this approach risks confirming the very image the speaker is supposed to challenge.

What made the performance more frustrating was the obvious lack of preparation. Anyone who has followed Piers Morgan’s interviews since October 7 could have anticipated nearly every major question. There was no mystery about what Hamad would be asked: the killing of civilians, the taking of hostages, the events of October 7, Hamas’s intentions, and whether it would repeat the attack. These were predictable questions that demanded carefully prepared, direct, and coherent answers.

The technical presentation made matters worse: poor lighting, an unstable internet connection, a stern and constantly frowning expression, a loud and abrasive tone, and visible irritation whenever the questions became difficult. None of these details is trivial on television. In a hostile interview, the viewer judges not only the speaker’s words, but also his face, tone, discipline, and ability to remain calm under pressure.

Yet anyone who has closely followed Hamas’s discourse since the movement’s founding, whether in Arabic or English, will know that its political and media language has evolved considerably. Hamas has not remained trapped entirely within the traditional religious vocabulary of Islamic resistance movements. Over time, it has adjusted its terminology, widened its political framing, and increasingly used the language of national liberation, occupation, international law, and resistance.

The problem, therefore, is not that Hamas’s discourse has never evolved. The problem is that its leaders have still not learned how to transform an internally mobilizing narrative into a persuasive external argument.

A speech designed to inspire supporters is not the same as an argument designed to persuade sceptics. Repeating the history of the occupation may strengthen the convictions of an Arab or Palestinian audience that already accepts the speaker’s basic premises. But when a Western interviewer asks about a specific act, victim, or decision, returning to the general history of the conflict without answering the question sounds like evasion.

Hamas’s leaders remain largely unprepared to communicate effectively with either Arabic-speaking or English-speaking audiences. Internally, their rhetoric too often substitutes declarations of victory, steadfastness, and sacrifice for a serious assessment of political and human consequences. Externally, they struggle to answer direct questions, acknowledge uncomfortable facts, or explain their decisions in language capable of reaching people who do not already share their worldview.

There are many reasons for this failure, which I will address in a later article.

For those interested in understanding how Hamas’s political discourse has evolved, I have summarized an important academic paper by researcher Imad Alsoos below. The paper examines approximately three decades of Hamas’s political language, from the movement’s establishment in 1987 until roughly 2018, tracing its gradual shift from the religious framework of jihad to the broader and more flexible language of resistance.

________________________________________________________________________

From jihad to resistance: the evolution of Hamas’s discourse in the framework of mobilization

By: Imad Alsoos

From Jihad to Resistance: How Hamas Reframed Its Political Discourse

In his 2021 study, “From Jihad to Resistance: The Evolution of Hamas’s Discourse in the Framework of Mobilization,” Imad Alsoos examines how Hamas changed the language through which it explains its actions and mobilizes support. His central argument is not that Hamas evolved from an Islamic movement into a secular or moderate one. Rather, Hamas retained its Islamic identity while gradually replacing jihad with muqawama, or resistance, as the central frame of its political discourse. This change enabled the movement to appeal to a broader constituency, adapt to changing political circumstances, and present its actions in terms that carried greater national and international legitimacy.

Alsoos uses the concept of a “master frame” to explain this development. A master frame is the central idea through which a political movement connects different issues, interprets events, justifies decisions, and constructs a shared worldview. Its effectiveness depends on its ability to resonate not only with committed supporters but also with wider sections of society. In Hamas’s early discourse, jihad performed this function. Later, resistance became the movement’s master frame.

The 1988 Hamas Charter reflected a comprehensive religious worldview strongly influenced by the thought of Sayyid Qutb. Jihad did not refer exclusively to armed struggle. It included the religious, political, educational, social, and cultural transformation of Palestinian society. Writers, teachers, journalists, religious preachers, and fighters could all participate in jihad. The occupation of Palestine was consequently interpreted not only as a colonial or national problem but also as a consequence of the absence of authentic Islamic government and social organization.

Within this early framework, the conflict was frequently described in religious terms as a struggle between Muslims and Jews. Palestine was presented as an Islamic endowment that could not be surrendered, secular Palestinian movements were treated as ideological rivals, and the establishment of an Islamic state remained an eventual objective. Hamas sought to build a society of mujahidun whose actions would be guided by a unified Islamic worldview.

This discourse, however, failed to mobilize enough Palestinians to prevent the PLO from participating in the Madrid peace conference, signing the Oslo Accords, and establishing the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian society included Islamists, Christians, secular nationalists, leftists, and people who did not accept Hamas’s religious assumptions. Hamas therefore faced a political reality that could not be transformed simply by repeating the language of its founding Charter.

The movement began adapting its discourse. Its 1993 Introductory Memorandum increasingly described the conflict as one with Zionism rather than with Jews as a religious community. This was more than a semantic alteration. It allowed Hamas to frame the conflict as one involving colonialism, displacement, occupation, and national self-determination. It also reduced the political damage caused by generalized language about Jews, particularly before Western audiences familiar with the history of European antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Other aspects of the original religious framework were also weakened. Cooperation with Palestinian organizations became increasingly dependent on political positions rather than religious conformity. Hamas formed electoral alliances with Christians and members of left-wing organizations. It entered elections and operated within a Palestinian system governed by the secular Basic Law rather than attempting to impose the 1988 Charter as state policy. Although the movement did not abandon its religious identity or its long-term territorial claims, its discourse became more responsive to political circumstances.

The failure of the Oslo process and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 accelerated the rise of resistance as Hamas’s new master frame. As Palestinian confidence in negotiations declined, armed resistance gained greater popular support. Israel’s withdrawal of settlements and military forces from Gaza in 2005 was widely interpreted as an achievement of resistance, strengthening Hamas’s claim that its strategy had succeeded where negotiations had failed.

Alsoos’s textual analysis demonstrates the scale of the linguistic transformation. Between 2001 and 2005, Hamas leaders used muqawama approximately ten times as often as jihad. In 2007, the ratio was approximately twenty-four to one. During the 2014 Gaza war, major speeches by Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh repeatedly invoked resistance without using jihad. In Hamas’s 2017 political document, jihad appeared only once, while resistance appeared fifteen times and functioned as the document’s principal framework.

Resistance was more useful because it was inclusive, flexible, and territorially bounded. Unlike jihad, it could be embraced by Islamists, secularists, Christians, nationalists, and leftists. Internationally, Hamas could connect resistance with anti-colonialism, opposition to occupation, national self-determination, and international law. It could also distinguish its territorial struggle in Palestine from the transnational violence of organizations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The concept was flexible enough to include armed struggle, elections, political reform, institution-building, social welfare, and opposition to corruption. Hamas described its electoral platform as a program of resistance, its electoral victory as a victory for resistance, and its government as a government of resistance. This flexibility initially expanded the movement’s political reach, but it eventually created a more troubling transformation.

After Hamas entered government in 2006, it faced international isolation, Israeli restrictions, conflict with Fatah, economic collapse, and an inability to fulfil many of its electoral promises. This produced a crisis in its political narrative. If Hamas had offered a government of resistance, why had that government failed to deliver the promised security, reform, and prosperity?

According to Alsoos, Hamas responded by expanding the meaning of resistance until it became what he calls “an unfixed and indefinable concept able to explain inaction as well as contradictory positions” (2021, p. 834). Resistance came to include steadfastness, patience, endurance of the blockade, economic survival, the tunnel economy, public services, ceasefires, and the population’s ability to remain in Gaza during war.

This transformation allowed suffering itself to be incorporated into the resistance narrative. Fighters in tunnels were resistance, but civilians remaining in their homes were also resistance. Poverty, death, and destruction could be interpreted through the language of steadfastness and sacrifice. Instead of automatically becoming grounds for questioning political decisions, Palestinian suffering could be presented as evidence of the population’s commitment to the struggle.

The same framework was also used to justify the exercise of power inside Gaza. Hamas presented its actions against Fatah and other opponents as necessary to protect the resistance project. Political rivals could be associated with security coordination or attempts to overthrow the government, allowing coercive actions against them to be represented as a defence of resistance rather than ordinary political repression.

Alsoos does not conclude that Hamas abandoned Islam, renounced armed struggle, recognized Israel, or became genuinely moderate. Islam remained central to the movement’s identity and moral worldview. What changed was its function within the political discourse. In the author’s formulation, “religion has lost its central role” in directly explaining and justifying Hamas’s actions (2021, p. 846). Resistance now performs that function.

The paper therefore reveals both the strength and danger of Hamas’s rhetorical transformation. Resistance enabled the movement to communicate beyond its original Islamic constituency and to adapt to changing circumstances. Yet its increasing ambiguity also protected Hamas from accountability. Military action, ceasefires, elections, government, failure, suffering, and repression could all be absorbed into the same framework. Resistance ceased to be merely a strategy whose results could be evaluated. It became an identity, a source of legitimacy, and a narrative capable of presenting almost every possible outcome as evidence of its continued validity.

Reference: Alsoos, I. (2021). From jihad to resistance: The evolution of Hamas’s discourse in the framework of mobilization. Middle Eastern Studies, 57(5), 833–856. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2021.1897006.

For nearly two decades, Hamas helped entrench Palestinian division. Then October 7 handed Israel the pretext it used to devastate Gaza. Bezalel Smotrich had already explained why Hamas was an asset to the Israeli right.

Hamas’s era as Gaza’s armed governing power appears to be approaching its end.

The movement has already announced that it will dissolve its government and transfer civilian authority to a Palestinian technocratic administration. Now, the United States says an agreement has been reached for Hamas and other armed groups to disarm in phases as Israeli forces withdraw.

The details remain contested, Israel has yet to accept the proposed terms, and implementation is far from guaranteed. But the direction is unmistakable: after nearly two decades of ruling Gaza, Hamas is being pushed out of government and toward disarmament.

Hamas will not disappear. Its role will be confined to politics alone, with no military presence left in Palestine. It will maintain offices in Turkey, Iran, and maybe elsewhere, issue statements, attend conferences, and seek to preserve its political influence from exile. But inside Palestine, the project it imposed on Gaza has reached its practical conclusion.

That conclusion demands an honest reckoning. Over the past two decades, Hamas handed Israel two gifts of extraordinary political value: first, a divided Palestinian people and a Gaza severed from the West Bank; second, the October 7 attack that provided Israel with the pretext it used to unleash the destruction of Gaza.

The first gift: division

Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. That fact must not be erased. Nor should the role of Fatah, Israel, the United States and other outside powers in the crisis that followed. Western governments refused to accept the election’s outcome, while the struggle between Hamas and Fatah escalated into armed conflict.

But none of this removes Hamas’s agency. In June 2007, it seized Gaza by force and established a separate, increasingly authoritarian government. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority entrenched their own authoritarian rule in the West Bank. They have become two rival political systems, each with its own security services, bureaucracy, loyalties and mechanisms of repression.

For nearly twenty years, the division reshaped Palestinian life. Gaza was treated as “Hamas territory” and the West Bank as “Palestinian Authority territory,” even though both are parts of the same occupied Palestinian homeland. Elections disappeared. Political affiliation infiltrated employment, institutions and personal relationships. Accusations of treason replaced national debate.

The separation did not merely divide geography. It damaged social trust and fractured the Palestinian political imagination.

Israel did not create this division on its own, but Israeli governments quickly understood its value and worked to preserve it. An Israeli analysis published immediately after October 7 described how successive Netanyahu governments weakened the Palestinian Authority while allowing foreign cash and economic arrangements to sustain Hamas’s rule in Gaza. The objective was not peace. It was to prevent the emergence of a unified Palestinian leadership capable of advancing the demand for statehood.

Few Israeli politicians expressed this logic more plainly than Bezalel Smotrich.

In a 2015 interview on Israel’s Knesset Channel, Smotrich, now Israel’s finance minister, argued:

“In the international arena, in this game of legitimacy and delegitimization, think about it for a moment: the Palestinian Authority is a burden, while Hamas is an asset.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. No one will recognize it, no one will grant it state status, no one will allow it to lead a resolution in the United Nations Security Council. Then the question becomes whether we will need an American veto or not; I am not sure.

Given that the main arena in which we are now playing is the arena of international legitimacy, Mahmoud Abbas causes us significant damage there. Hamas, on the other hand, in this regard, is an asset in my view. I don’t think we should be afraid of that.”

Smotrich understood that Hamas’s international isolation served the Israeli right. A Palestinian Authority pursuing recognition at the United Nations could turn occupation into a diplomatic and legal liability. Hamas, by contrast, allowed Israel to portray the Palestinian question primarily as a security problem rather than a struggle for freedom and self-determination.

The more Hamas presented itself as the sole guardian of Palestine, the easier it became for Israel to claim that there was no Palestinian partner, no unified Palestinian leadership and therefore no Palestinian state with which to negotiate.

Hamas and the Israeli right remained genuine enemies. But enemies can still serve one another’s political interests. Israel needed a divided, isolated and internationally unacceptable Palestinian opponent. Hamas’s rule in Gaza helped provide one.

The second gift: October 7

The second gift was far more devastating.

October 7 was not only a military attack. Strategically, it was a suicidal offensive launched without a credible plan to protect Gaza’s population, secure an achievable political outcome or confront the overwhelming retaliation that Hamas’s leaders had every reason to expect.

It also handed the most extreme government in Israel’s history the pretext it wanted.

That statement does not absolve Israel of a single crime. October 7 did not compel Israel to destroy homes, hospitals, universities, water systems and entire neighbourhoods. It did not compel Israel to starve civilians, repeatedly displace families or kill children.

Israel chose its methods, and Israeli political and military leaders remain responsible for those choices. A pretext is not a justification, and Palestinian wrongdoing cannot legalize collective punishment or genocide.

But Palestinian leadership in Gaza must also be judged by the consequences they could reasonably foresee. A leadership cannot launch an open-ended war against a vastly more powerful state, offer civilians no protection, produce no realistic path to victory and then treat the population’s suffering as proof of its own moral legitimacy.

Palestinians have the right to resist occupation and to struggle for self-determination. More importantly, a right is not a strategy. Any movement acting in the name of resistance must be judged by its objectives, its methods, the costs it imposes on its people and the results it achieves.

By those standards, October 7 was a catastrophic failure.

Nearly three years later, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza. Almost the entire population has been displaced, much of the territory’s housing and infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, and Israel now controls most of the Strip. Hamas, meanwhile, is preparing to relinquish both its weapons and the government it held for nearly two decades. This is a political and military defeat whose highest cost was imposed on civilians who were never consulted about the decision to begin the war.

It is not enough to say that Israel’s response was monstrous. It was. The question is whether Hamas’s leaders had a duty to anticipate that monstrosity before placing more than two million people directly in its path.

Gaza had already endured major Israeli assaults in 2008–09, 2012, 2014 and 2021. The asymmetry of power was not a secret. Israel’s willingness to inflict mass civilian suffering was not an unforeseeable development.

Before October 7, Israel faced growing international scrutiny over occupation, settlements, apartheid and the systematic denial of Palestinian rights. The attack allowed Israel and its allies to recast the Palestinian struggle as a war between civilization and terrorism. For months, Western governments gave Israel political cover, weapons and diplomatic protection while Gaza was being destroyed.

Hamas did not order Israel to commit these crimes. But it handed Israel a powerful narrative with which to defend them.

The leadership Gaza is asking for

The distinction between resistance and recklessness is not being imposed on Palestinians from outside. Gazans themselves are making it.

Throughout this war, a 2010 interview with Ramadan Shallah, the former secretary-general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who died in 2020, has circulated widely in Gaza.

His voice is being shared because his warning now feels painfully clear:

"We often say that resistance is a clear and deliberate choice. But the pace of resistance, whether it intensifies or slows, is a matter of strategy. And I am certain the day will come when the world stands up and says, 'Enough resistance, enough armed struggle. What are you doing to us?'

We are living in a time when an Arab leader sends a message of congratulations to Israel on its so-called Independence Day. What kind of era is this?

This is the reality into which Palestinian resistance has emerged. But is it fair to expect that resistance alone, through one martyrdom operation, can transform everything? Can anyone truly bear the cost?

Yes, we can launch hundreds of rockets from Gaza tomorrow. But you, the Arab citizen and Arab intellectual, what will your stance be if war erupts and Gaza’s people pay the price?

We are managing a conflict. We are not blind to the world, nor are we recklessly smashing our heads against a wall. We see our people’s needs. We see the needs of our fighters.”

The clip has become a reference point for the kind of leadership many Palestinians believe they were denied. Journalist Mohammad Qita called Shallah “a wise man and a true thinker.” Ammar, from Gaza, wrote that this was leadership “that protects its people, not the kind that sacrifices us ... then lectures us from abroad.” Omar Mansour described October 7 as “a strategic mistake, a reckless gamble” whose price Gaza’s people are now paying.

These are not calls for surrender. They are demands for resistance governed by strategy, accountability and a duty to protect the people in whose name it is waged. Palestinians are not afraid of resistance. They are afraid of being sacrificed without a voice or a say. What they seek is a leadership that places people before slogans and reality before illusion.

The end of an era must become the beginning of accountability

The end of Hamas rule should not be mistaken for a victory for the Palestinian Authority, Israel or foreign trusteeship.

The Palestinian Authority is unelected, deeply discredited and increasingly repressive. Replacing one unaccountable faction with another would not repair Palestinian politics. Nor should Gaza’s future be decided by Israel, the United States or any international board without the meaningful consent of Palestinians themselves.

What Palestinians need now is not another faction declaring itself the exclusive guardian of the national cause. They need a unified, pluralistic and accountable political system; national elections; one legal and institutional framework for Gaza and the West Bank; and a leadership whose decisions are measured by their ability to protect Palestinians, keep them on their land and translate their rights into achievable political gains.

Hamas will preserve its name, its flag and offices abroad. Its leaders may call organizational survival a victory. But the survival of an organization is not the survival of a people.

The historical balance sheet is devastating. Hamas promised liberation and is ending its rule by negotiating the surrender of its weapons. It claimed to protect Gaza and leaves behind a shattered territory. It presented itself as the force capable of uniting Palestinians while helping entrench the deepest internal division in modern Palestinian history.

None of this diminishes Israel’s responsibility. Israel imposed the occupation and blockade. Israel chose to devastate Gaza. Israel remains accountable for every strike, every act of collective punishment and every attempt to make Palestinian life impossible.

But Palestinian accountability cannot be postponed until Israeli accountability arrives. A national movement that refuses to examine its own failures condemns itself to repeat them.

Smotrich told the world exactly why the Israeli right regarded Hamas as an asset, and Gaza’s ruins reveal who was forced to pay the price.

They Said...

If a settler comes to your land,
carrying his rifle
more heavily than his humanity,

do not raise your voice.
Do not raise your hands.
Do not defend the home
where you first learned your own name.

Let him uproot the olive tree.
Let him break down the door.
Let him carve his name
into your walls.

Then,

if you must weep,
weep softly,
lest you be accused
of disturbing the world’s peace.

And if you die,

die quietly,
so the evening news
can keep its tidy headlines.

For in this age,

the victim is not expected
to survive.

Only to master
the art of dying
without troubling
anyone’s conscience.

Hello everyone,

I’m excited to announce a new Arabic Reading and Writing Course for Beginners (MSA), starting on Saturday, August 1.

This course is designed for learners who already know the Arabic alphabet and can read simple words but would like to become more confident in reading, writing, and spelling.

Throughout the course, we will explore:

• Simplified daily news in Modern Standard Arabic

• Short poems, stories, and literary texts

• Everyday dialogues and practical texts

• Reading comprehension and vocabulary

• Pronunciation and reading aloud

• Spelling and dictation

• Sentence building and basic grammar

• Guided writing, including messages, descriptions, and short paragraphs

Course Details

Saturdays and Sundays

Starting Aug 8, 2026
11:30 a.m. ET | 4:30 p.m. London | 6:30 p.m. Cairo
16 sessions, each lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes
20 hours of instruction in total
Live on Zoom
Course fee: £80
___________________________________________________________________

All sessions will be recorded, so you can catch up if you miss a class. You will also join a WhatsApp group for additional practice, course materials, and support between sessions.

Interested in joining?

Please sign up using the form below:

Sign up for the course

You do not need to pay at this stage. I first need to confirm how many students are interested in joining the class. If you are interested, please complete the form to register your interest.

I would love to have you in the class!

Warm wishes,
Alaa

Between promises to end the war, rebuild Gaza and restore Palestinian unity, and the absence of any reckoning with the choices made on October 7 and their consequences, Gazan writers, activists and citizens saw a speech aimed more at the movement than at a society whose life has been destroyed.

In his first speech after being elected head of Hamas’s poli…

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Handwritten Sinwar Document Reveals Details of October 7 Plan, Expected Israeli Nuclear Response

Monday, July 12, 2026

The Jerusalem Post has published details of what it says is a handwritten document by former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, written about a year before the October 7, 2023 attack.

According to the report, the document contains a detailed opera…

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Israel’s greatest achievement in Gaza was not recovering all of its hostages, eliminating every real or perceived security threat from Gaza, or taking control of almost 70% of the Gaza Strip. Nor was it accelerating settlement expansion in the West Bank while systematically dismantling any potential future threat to Israel there.

Its greatest achievement was psychological.

After years of war, and especially after the devastation since October 2023, it has left many Palestinians questioning whether resistance can achieve anything at all. For many, the calculation has changed. Resistance no longer appears to promise liberation, but only more destruction, more displacement, and lives set back by decades.

Psychologists call this learned helplessness. When people are repeatedly exposed to overwhelming events they cannot control, they can begin to believe that nothing they do will change the outcome. The issue is not a lack of courage or resilience. It is the erosion of the belief that any action can produce a different future.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of this shift is that most Gazans now say they would do anything to return to October 6, 2023. Not because life was good. It wasn’t. Gaza was already living under a suffocating Israeli blockade, governed by Hamas amid widespread criticism over corruption and repression, while the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah was unable or unwilling to change the status quo. Yet compared with today’s reality, that deeply imperfect life has become something many long to have back.

That is a reality rarely reflected in media coverage. Much of the world sees only the destruction of Gaza’s buildings. Far less attention is paid to the destruction of hope itself.

If a people come to believe that every form of resistance is futile, that is more than a military victory. It is a victory over hope, over agency, and over the very belief that their future can be be shaped by their own choices.

I remember October 6 as if it were yesterday. It was a beautiful, ordinary day. That evening, my husband and I took our three children out for ice cream. They were all under the age of two. Kinan and Kinda were one year and ten months old, and little Yaman was only two and a half months old. Kinan and Kinda were so excited to have ice cream. On the drive home, we played children’s songs, clapped along with them, and watched them laugh from the back seat.

The next morning, we woke up to October 7. Many Israelis and people in the West believe that all Gazans celebrated that morning. I can only speak for myself and the people around me. What I felt was not celebration. It was shock. None of us expected what had happened. It was my first war as a mother. Having children in Gaza made me feel weaker than I had ever felt, yet stronger than I had ever imagined. The fear of losing my children was overwhelming. At the same time, the instinct to protect them gave me a strength I didn’t know I possessed.

I was terrified of what was coming because I knew the equation of war between Israel and Gaza. In the 50-day war of 2014, 73 Israelis were killed, while 2,251 Palestinians in Gaza were killed. During the 2008–2009 war, 13 Israelis were killed, compared with 1,417 Palestinians. Every Palestinian knows this equation. We know how these wars end.

The moment I saw what had happened on October 7, I felt something I had never felt before. I knew, with terrifying certainty, that this war would be unlike anything we had lived through before. I believed we had lost Gaza forever, and that Israel would leave nothing standing. I remember saying to my husband on the morning of October 7, “They’re going to drop a nuclear bomb on us.”

On the other hand, a Times of Israel analy…

Read more

In December 2023, Israel bombed the Al-Basma IVF Center in Gaza City, where thousands of couples had turned in hope of becoming parents.

The blast struck the embryology laboratory, causing the ultra-cold liquid nitrogen stored in five cryogenic tanks to evaporate. As temperatures rose, more than 4,000 frozen embryos, along with approximately 1,000 samples of sperm and unfertilized eggs, were destroyed. Many of the frozen sperm samples belonged to men with severe fertility problems. Some had undergone intensive medical treatment and even surgical sperm extraction procedures, in which sperm is retrieved directly from the testicles when none can be obtained naturally.

Five thousand potential lives were lost in a single strike.

But the story does not end there.

As someone who underwent IVF treatment at Al-Basma in 2021, I can tell you that IVF is not a simple medical procedure. It is physically, emotionally, and financially exhausting. During my own treatment, I received more than 40 hormone injections in just 17 days. The process involved multiple procedures, constant medical appointments, and weeks of anxiety, hope, and uncertainty.

For many Palestinian couples, the financial burden is just as overwhelming. IVF treatment can cost more than a family earns in months. Women often sell their jewelry, frequently their only personal savings, to afford a cycle. Those without savings borrow money from relatives and friends, placing their hopes for a child on loans they may spend years repaying.

In Palestine, where large families are common, and most couples expect to have children within the first years of marriage, infertility carries an additional emotional weight. For many, IVF is not simply a medical treatment; it is the last chance to build the family they have always imagined.

I was fortunate. My first IVF cycle was successful.

My treatment coincided with the May 2021 war in Gaza. As I was trying to become a mother, I found myself fearing for my life and the lives of my unborn children. The war ended, and my twins survived. Like many IVF patients, I also had three embryos frozen and stored at Al-Basma in case I needed them in the future. They remained there until the clinic was bombed.

When I heard the news, I was stunned. I could not understand why an IVF clinic, and specifically its embryology laboratory, had been targeted.

As a woman whose IVF journey ultimately ended in motherhood, I was not planning to use those embryos. My first IVF cycle resulted in twins, and two years later I gave birth to a baby boy through a natural pregnancy. Yet this was never how I expected to lose them. When I learned that the embryos had been destroyed in the bombing, I felt both sadness and disbelief.

For less fortunate women, the loss was immeasurably greater. Thousands of frozen embryos represented years of treatment, sacrifice, and hope. For many patients, they were the only realistic chance of ever becoming parents. When the embryos were destroyed, so too were dreams that had taken years to create.

After the bombing, I spoke with a close friend who served as the head nurse at Al-Basma. She shared heartbreaking testimonies from patients who learned that their embryos had been lost. Some had spent years saving for treatment. Others had already exhausted every medical option available to them. Many would never have another opportunity to try again.

Amjad

Amjad and her husband turned to IVF because of fertility-related complications. They eventually had two children, but both suffered from a severe neurodegenerative condition.

Determined to have healthy children, Amjad underwent a specialized IVF process involving genetic screening. She waited a long time for doctors to obtain the appropriate material needed to create embryos free from the condition that affected her children.

Eventually, four healthy embryos were successfully created. Two were transferred and two were frozen.

The first transfer failed. Amjad waited two months before planning another attempt using her frozen embryos.

Then the war began.

Before she could return to the clinic, the embryos were destroyed in the bombing. Along with them disappeared years of waiting, treatment, and the hope of starting again.

The loss was made even more devastating by the fact that her two children later died during the genocide.

Noura

Noura’s journey to motherhood lasted six years.

Her husband suffers from congenital abnormalities and an undescended testicle, making conception extremely difficult. The couple saved every penny they could from his modest income. They borrowed money from relatives and sought help from charitable organizations to afford IVF treatment.

After years of struggle, they finally began the process. Noura completed extensive testing, while her husband underwent surgical sperm extraction. Four embryos were successfully created. Two were transferred and two were frozen.

Two weeks later, a pregnancy test confirmed success.

Noura was pregnant with twins.

The joy was overwhelming. Family members celebrated, and staff at the clinic shared in her happiness. Given the medical and financial obstacles she had overcome, her pregnancy felt like a miracle.

Five months later, war engulfed Gaza.

As displacement forced the family to move repeatedly from one place to another, Noura became increasingly exhausted. The stress, fear, and harsh conditions took a heavy toll on her health.

She lost one twin at home. She lost the second while trying to reach a hospital.

The babies were approximately seven months gestational age. Because of the intensity of the bombardment and the collapse of medical services, they could not be placed in neonatal intensive care and did not survive.

Noura lost her twins.

She also lost the two frozen embryos that remained stored at Al-Basma IVF clinic.

Today, she continues to live with profound psychological trauma. She spends her days and nights grieving the children she waited six years to have, only to lose them all.

Lubna

Lubna’s husband suffers from severe male-factor infertility. For years, the couple waited and endured repeated treatments in the hope of obtaining viable sperm. Even a single sperm cell was considered a success.

Their chances of conceiving were extremely low. After multiple rounds of treatment and surgical sperm extraction, they finally managed to freeze a sample. When an IVF cycle was attempted, Lubna became pregnant, but miscarried after six weeks.

Determined to try again, her husband continued to take monthly tests, hoping another sample could be frozen. But no viable sperm could be obtained. Then the war began.

Since the outbreak of the war, Lubna has been unable to access further testing or treatment for her husband, including the surgical procedures required to retrieve sperm. Her frozen sample was destroyed when the clinic was bombed.

“It is one of the most difficult cases we have seen,” the head nurse at the clinic told me. Yet Lubna continues to hold on to hope.

At Al-Basma clinic, couples did not store medical specimens. They stored years of sacrifice, borrowed money, painful procedures, and dreams for children they had not yet met. When the clinic was destroyed, thousands of embryos were lost. But so too were thousands of futures that parents had spent years trying to bring into the world.